Corrupt at the Core

Suffer Not the Heretic

Arriving at Atlas, it’s time to put an end to the Argent Vanguard once and for all.

We arrive, taking the Lady Gray along just in case we want to show her, and the evidence of the abuse against her.

Tord tries to sneak in a power sword but is caught, so he stays outside and dons his power armor again. He stays outside even during dinner, but Dariel takes a plate of food out to him.

Dinner is a formal affair, kind of like the Lady Gray’s banquets. We don’t see any of Virga’s team, but we do see Constance. Lady Gray is also brought in, and sings along with the opening hymn. During dinner Constance takes up her chair and comes over to sit with them. She tries to plead with them to take her position and help to save all the lives and believe in Phylus’ plan.

Dariel tries to get her to give up her plan for the Conclave in response, but she is equally resistant to that. They both try to convince each other, unsuccessfully. They harbor no ill will towards each other, however, and continue to talk through dinner about other matters.

The conclave begins the next morning, with a panel of 5 inquisitors overseeing the back and forth between the two sides. Constance began her presentation as they had already heard it, talking about the possible risks of leaving the Tyrant Star alone, and about how they think they can revise Phylus’ theories to make them cheaper and more efficient in terms of loss of life.

Tybalt got up and made an interesting speech, seeming to draw a bridge between the two sides, but then throwing his support for Constance!!! Dariel then had to get up and make a defence of their side. There was a strong back and forth, talking about the nature of the inquisition and heresy, talking about whether there is a spectrum or a black and white decision. Tybalt tried to give good reasons why they should at least find out more, particularly in terms of having an opportunity to be aggressive towards the warp and chaos.

After the bulk of the debate is over, Constance makes clear that she is the only one who stands accused, and that even though Tybalt supports her, he is not currently accused. She invokes an arcane inquisitorial rule that she can confess in the process of healing the schism. She admits that the methods she used were heretical, but in doing so bequeaths her inquisitorial status to Tybalt. This way her personal history, heretical acts, and general baggage, won’t negatively impact their position, in case they are sympathetic to the cause. She also uses some legal chicanery to say that she is now an acolyte to Tybalt, and that only he has the power to punish her for her crimes.

The head of the panel seemed baffled by all of these proceedings. After confirming that Tybalt accepted becoming an inquisitor, and accepted Constance as an acolyte, he then affirmed that nothing had really been decided, legally, and that the status quo would remain.

So, the status quo is preserved for a while, at least, Dariel plans to chase after Tybalt and expose his proposed treachery. Tybalt takes Harrish with him, and is now an inquisitor with a target on his back. So, the campaign ends with nobody REALLY happy.

Ingo has been cracked, and the guard has begun the long slog of clearing it out. Our heroes emerge bruised and battered.

We go to the planet and get some eyes for Tybalt and some knees for Arrish.

We get invited down to dinner with Captain Aiken, he had also invited Virga down, and wanted to get some polite explanations for what exactly happened. They tried to tell him that they were actually on the same side of the inquisition, it was just a question of misunderstanding and different knowledge at different times Virga though, decided to berate the general for going against the instructions of the inquisition.

Liesl wanted to try to communicate with The Drax who was with Virga there, he left the room and tried to get Drax to follow, but Virga wouldn’t allow it.

At a certain point, Virga decided that she and The Drax needed to leave. Liesl tried to pass him a note, remembering that he has HANDS! He doesn’t have to use a mechadendrite!

But, he gets caught passing the note. Virga demands that the general leave the room, and then that Liesl explain himself. She tells a dreadful lie that she is attracted to him but they are caught out and have to explain that it is about Drax’s brother.

They get back to the rogue trader, and find that another shuttle matching theirs, with the same transponder signal, landed and transferred the prisoners out. It seems like matching the signals is a very difficult technical feat, but we’re not sure exactly how it was managed. It seems it happened during the dinner, so Virga doesn’t seem to have been personally responsible, there was some other flunky that did it.

Dariel checks some surveillance video footage, and sees some acolyte looking types going to transfer the prisoners, and it seems very official, they seem to have proper paperwork that the guards recognize. The party does not recognize them.

They get in touch with The Drax, and he seems to agree that he will still come and serve them as per his word. They also talk to Virga, and she seems unapologetic about taking them, that it doesn’t break her agreement, and that it was their duty to try to escape imprisonment.

The Atlassian Conclave is coming up! We are probably going to that next. We need to convince the inquisition not to follow the path of the Argent Vanguard. We are going to compile a list of all of the heretical plots they initiated that we foiled, to point out all of the evil they have initiated. Dariel prepares a monologue on the inherent untrustworthiness and unpredictability of the warp, and how foolhardy any plan is that relies on controlling and predicting it.

They manage to take out the last gun nests, and try to open the door to Xylex’s Cathedral. The door is barred and Liesl begins using her plasma cutter. Xylex on the comm became more rushed and less bragging once they started cutting, and said how he had to rush the ritual because they were right outside.

They enter an antechamber with another door, they start to shoot it down, and then hear Xylex over the comm being shot (presumably?) and cursing whoever did it to him? The door comes open, and they see rows of pews leading up to a pile of bodies. The walls are covered with arcane symbols and equations written in blood.

In the center of the room is an evil looking vortex, with two crucified people at the center, one upside down above the other. They have wires going into their heads, which are whipping around in the wind, as they scream constantly. Tentacles are coming out of the chest of the one on the bottom, wrapping around an elderly man in robes.

Liesl can’t pull her eyes off of the horrific trio in the center. Tord glances around the room and sees the remains of a firefight in the wounds on some robed figures, and some burns on armored figures.

Liesl asks if the man in the tentacles is father xylex, and he says yes – but he repents! Please save him! Liesl is not moved, and hits him with a plasma blast straight on. She doesn’t now if it’s the right thing to do, but it’s the right thing for her! “I shoot him. I don’t know how this ritual works, I don’t know if this is the right answer, but this is Leisl’s answer, and she lives her truth!” – Liesl

(She has Live, Laugh, Love carved on a piece of sandalwood in her bunk)

Father Xylex is obliterated, and the tentacles holding him slurp back into the guy’s chest. Tord recognizes the guy as Drax, brother of other Drax(?) He moves to pull him off the nails on the wall. Tord pulls him towards Harrish to try to nullify any psyker nonsense, and Liesl injects him with a stimm. He wakes up, and they tell him that his mission was successful.

The two crucified men (Arrish and SoDrax) told them the story of how they infiltrated the hive and were captured, the other two members of their squad were killed in the process. Their memory gets hazy after they were captured (But Liesl can tell that they are lying about that!)

Liesl tries to confront them, but they get defensive. Tybalt lets them know that even though they were sent by Acolyte Augyx, that they were being taken into custody by the party, and they then had a scuffle. They managed to get them bound, even though they fought back and Liesl shot one in the knee.

They take their prisoners back up to the Rogue Trader, and contact Virga Augyx to let her know that they were successful, and they show her that the prisoners are alive.

The group meets up with general Aiken, and gets 300 guardsmen to come with them, including his 2nd in command, Jellesta (via erin) and they give Pris a rest. They head back to the cathedral. There is a giant crowd trying to press toward the cathedral as father xylex continues talking over the vox to get them to come in. Tybalt tries to command them to leave, and is somewhat successful, but the crowd is still huge. Tord uses his contortionism to slip through the crowd and spy at the front, where they see some new gun emplacements brought in on the ground. Tybalt tells the people to head back to the docking bay to be rescued by the space marines, and the people start to call Tord a space marine, who chooses to duck down and crawl around to avoid being seen.

Tybalt tries to command some nearby citizens to begin singing their favorite hymn to the emperor in order to drown out father xylex, and is marginally successful at getting some of them to begin singing a hymn together. Liesel uses her mimicry ability to sing at a better pitch, and the sounds of the song begins spreading farther. They are fairly effective at getting the people in the courtyard to move away from the cathedral, but then the brother builders standing in the courtyard and the gun emplacements begin warming up to begin firing on the crowd.

Tord attempted to fire a hallucinogen grenade amidst all of the gun emplacements and builders at the cathedral entrance. The gunners on the edge notice the guardsmen approaching from the flank, and begin turning their fire in their direction, though the crowd in the middle continues to block any fire from getting through. Liesel uses Boomhilda to blast the protective guard away from one emplacement. Dariel brings a grenade launcher to Liesel so he can fire his hallucinogen grenade into the enemies, and manages to score a direct hit right in the center of them, causing them to behave erratically.

Tord and Dariel come out of the crowd charging at the guns and the guardsmen move to flank from the outside. One side of the guard manages to overcome the suppressing fire towards them, but one does not.

hopefully we survive after our valkyrie got shot down in front of a leman russ

We try to run out of the crashed valkyrie before we get shot again by the leman russ cannon. Tybalt gets on the vox comm and tries to command the nearby soldiers to converge on the tank. Everyone else scatters, as a power armored soldier climbs out of the tank with a power sword. It has chaos insignias on its armor! (though it’s not a chaos space marine)

Tord charges at the chaos soldier as it charges at him. Liesel fires at the tank as it draws a bead on the downed valkyrie. She fires and hits, but does minimal damage. Dariel runs at the tank with the bapstmag to try to do some point blank sniping. The tank fires at the valkyrie, which explodes, dealing massive damage to Tybalt, as he urges the guard towards the tank. He doesn’t quite die, but is knocked unconscious from fatigue, and suffers from blood loss.

Some hooked horror guys run to join the chaos soldier as Tord sprints toward him. Dariel runs toward the tank, and a normal looking foot begins sprouting from his leg, luckily looking very human. Liesel runs and patches up Tybalt, stopping his blood loss and injecting him with stimm, awakening him.

Other valkyries began circling around firing their guns at the tank, but it is only small arms fire.

Tord looks at the power sword in the soldier’s hand with lust in his eye, and disarms him with a quick prayer, and manages to grab the precious power sword in midair.

Liesel shoots another gigantic blast at the tank, blows a big hole in it, and the turret catches on fire.

We head back to the bay after getting beat to shit. We try to commandeer some soldiers to come support us. They are really reticent, and Liesel has to shoot a sergeant in order to get some cooperation. We try to get a larger amount, and we decide to try to help take out the tank that’s wreaking havoc in the bay. They use the rosette to commandeer a valkyrie to fly them around near the tank so they can shoot it from the air.

They head up in the valkyrie, boomhilda and the bapstmag both fire, dealing tremendous hits to the back of the tank. It is boosted up into the air, jostling everyone inside, and the engine is shot through, causing black smoke to start pouring out, and the gears start grinding.

Oops, actually it was a called shot to the bolter mounted on the top of the tank, slagging it completely. The tank begins tracking them and firing back, as the valkyrie begins juking and dodging around while the cannon keeps firing, coming VERYCLOSE. The ship begins shaking around hurting their aims, but Liesel just aims forever and manages to hit anyway. Pris keeps pounding the engine as well and the tank gradually grinds to a halt.

But, they immediately score the luckiest hit, those bastards, and hit the engine of the valkyrie, which begins to spiral downward. They all hunker down and prepare for impact. Tybalt takes his first hit of the fight, bringing him down to 0, and Pris barely survives.

Whoops, maybe we should have thought about this

Dariel and Liesel are cornered in the train car, Liesel contemplates shooting away the train car attachments to make it fall, irrespective of her own fall damage.

Pris (via erin) wallops some servitors (and they have the hooks?) whoever has the hooks, that’s who she hits.

Liesel shoots at the car attachments, and it drops, not doing much damage but knocking everyone over as they fall. Tybalt fires another krak grenade with harrish on his shoulder, glancing on the shoulder of the servitor but still doing damage.

Pris gets slashed again with pincers from the centipede/wyrm thing. It brings her down into critical territory! But Dariel seals her wounds which brings her back up into normal range. Tybalt runs away from the servitor near him! He commands the civilians around him to do as the emperor commands in their heart, but they don’t seem to do anything, he doesn’t seem to inspire confidence.

Pris continues to get the absolute stuffing beaten out of her, going back down to -6 (from true grit) She loses 3 fingers on her left hand, but retains use of the hand (such as it is)

Tord moves to fight the servitors in the train car, and takes several hits in defense of liesel and dariel. He then wipes out a servitor. Pris steels herself to mount one final all out assault on the wyrm, and slashes into it multiple times.

Lisel, sees this, aims boomhilda directly at the wyrm, and fires, hitting it square in its most vulnerable spots (probably). However, as much as it reels around and wavers, it is still alive. Dariel looks over and decides (via suggestion from the group, as kyle is not here) to spasm the giant wyrm, and against all odds it succeeds! It shrieks and waves around its limbs. Tybalt tries to circle back around to head to the group with the servitor behind him, Harrish guiding him on the way.

Tord and Pris land a series of incredibly crushing blows on the servitors and the wyrm. A spray of blood shoots out from the wyrm, making for dangerous terrain all around it, as guts fall out onto the ground. She falls over, tripping on the gore. Liesel, freed from the immediate thread of servitors by tord, can continue firing, and turns Hurtrude on the wyrm, continuing to blast away large chunks of its fleshy bits. Monster flesh is cooked by the plasma, stunning it for an incredible 12 rounds? What the fuck??

Tybalt slots his last krak grenade and shouts “The emperor will guide my shot!!”, and then fires, but it misses badly. The servitors attempt to hack away at Pris, but they all start slipping in the gore from the wyrm, falling prone (except for one), who attacks. Pris’ abdomen is slashed open, forcing Pris to choose whether to use her arms to hold in her guts. She chooses to use her hand with missing fingers to hold those guts in!!!

Tord charges into the gore pool, just barely staying upright in the slippery blood, slashing away at the remaining servitor. Pris manages to not die from blood loss, and delivers the killing blow to a servitor. #murdertwins4lyfe

Father Xylex gets on the voxcom to berate them for killing his beautiful creature! Pris has a giant abdomen wound, and Liesel attempts to heal her wound up, with an assist from Tord. The blood loss is staunched.

Tybalt consults his voluminous memory and decides that the Wyrm was not actually a demon, per se. It must be some kind of mixture of tech heresy/bio heresy/whatever else they happened to have around here. Miscegenation, screams Pris!!

Xylex continues yelling over the loudspeakers at them, he seems to think they are just simple guardsmen who somehow got in, but have no greater understanding or knowledge to fight against him. He brags constantly about defeating the inquisition.

For next time: The guardsmen attack was starting to falter a little when we left them. The tentacle monster was demoralizing them a lot. We still need to get in to see Xylex, and Dariel is pretty sure all of the death energy is heading into the cathedral. We also just smashed the train car that got us here, so…..

Tord runs up to the barrier, Pris drafts behind him as he clears a bath through the crowd. The servitors have climbed over the barrier and begun chopping through citizens. Tybalt tries to order the crowd to back up and give the space marines room.

Father Xylex gets on the vox com some more and asks the group if they even understand what he has been doing here. The doors of the cathedral open, and a horror from beyond comes out. It’s a large slithering centipede with pustules on its back, containing people inside.

They continue fighting the servitors, Tord slashes at some, Pris (via erin) shoots flames out at some, hitting some civilians in the process. Tybalt tries to command the civilians to head back and find the ‘armory’, though they don’t seem to know of any, but he tries to lead them away from the fighting regardless.

Liesel starts to get beaten back towards the train car, where he is surrounded and switches to defensive maneuvers. Dariel begins using a psyker power, using corpus conversion, and tries to control the body of a servitor. He succeeds, and one swings, slicing away at the other’s foot.

A couple servitors die from being on fire, Pris charges at the group of them surrounding Liesel. Liesel manages to overcome her fearlessness berzerker impulses and retreats into the train car.

The giant centipede creature crashes through the barrier towards them, as Pris slices open another servitor. Liesel sees the juicy boys centipede through the window of the car and fires Boomhilda at it. It’s not a great shot, but the damn thing is so huge that he hits it.

The centipede crashes through the barrier, shooting out some pimple boys who land perfectly around our heroes, who are very disdainful of their wire work.

Tybalt jabs another spook in himself, this time his special ‘mind control only’ spook, which gives him a fearful aura, which he activates. With the weakened veil, he thinks it could affect the servitors. He gets some psychic phenomenon, as a spooky wind blows past. He manages to frighten two servitors to run back away, but one still remains chasing them.

The hook monsters go after Pris, who fails 3 agility rolls and a strength roll (with 3 90’s and a 100) to get pulled right at the giant pimple beast.

Liesel whispers softly to boomhilda as she aims carefully at the giant monster from inside the car, trying to aim and miss Priss. She fires and misses, causing her to question all of her life choices. Priss stands and prepares to defend against the monster, and she is able to evade and dodge its attacks.

Liesel and Dariel ready and aim their weapons (dariel using the bapstmag) in the train car, Dariel hits with the bapstmag for an accurate strike. Tybalt has Harrish climb up on his back and aim for him, as he draws his grenade launcher, firing a krak grenade, but it misses off in the distance.

Servitors run into the train car as Liesel and Dariel are aiming. Andres turns to Kyle. ‘Are you ready to burn a fate chip with me?’

Leaving the Guard to handle the invasion of the hive, our heroes set out to find Xylix’s inner sanctum and end his threat once and for all.

We take the rail car to the sanctum, on the way Liesel gives Harrish a gun and instructs him in its use.

On the way they pass by a large open hallway heading towards a literal cathedral carved out of the rock. People are running in a panic towards the cathedral, pushing at a barrier set up. People that make it past the barrier (metal fence) are shot by snipers seemingly in the cathedral. The barrier is only waist high, but is slowing them up enough for the snipers to take out the ones that make it over

There’s about 100 yards between the barrier and the cathedral, and it is full of bodies. There is a line of servitors with chainswords and riot shields standing at the base of the cathedral, as well as 4 sentinel walkers with heavy flamers. There is a set of terraced steps with different platforms, and a fountain on the cathedral side.

The cathedral has stained glass windows with some scenes of hope, like the emperor standing strong with a flag killing a demon – but they seem somewhat wrong. Like, the demon’s tentacles are still encircling the emperor, and the flag seems to have tzeentch’s symbol hidden inside the flag. There is one with a space marine, but it has a tentacle instead of a hand and flames around its head

Tybalt begins trying to program some spider mines to go after the walkers. Dariel spends some time spotting snipers as they shoot civilians to try to figure out their positions. He spots six of them. Pris (bapstmag) and Dariel (using a long las) and Liesel (using boomhilda) all take aim, though liesel at a walker. (still from inside the train car, as the civilians wail at the doors thinking that the builders have arrived) All 3 hit, two snipers are taken out, and the walker is largely obliterated.

Tord opens the door and tries to push back the people in order to get out, but he wasn’t able to intimidate them, and failed to push them back, they try to claw their way into the car. Pris and Dariel take aim at the snipers again. Tybalt has reprogrammed the spider mines to ignore any signals below a certain threshold, hopefully hitting only the walkers, and he lets them loose through the crowd of people.

Liesel fires his plasma gun at the servitors, dealing damage, but prompting them to move their line forwards towards the crowd. Tord is having trouble keeping the crowd out of the car, so he cuts 3 of them down. Tybalt tries to comfort Harrish as he watches these horrific scenes of gore.

The group continues firing and trading shots with the snipers. Tybalt gets on the vox comm and tries to order the group to back up and go back to their homes. Boomhilda finishes cooling and recharding, and Liesel fires again at a walker, causing it to explode violently.

Spider mines climb up the remaining walkers, causing one prometheum tank to explode, for the other the engine explodes. One pilot died from the burning prometheum, the other lost an arm and his sentinel became immobile, but the flamer still works.

Calling it a night – the servitors are coming over the barrier, 3 of 4 walkers are down, one is disabled, 4 snipers are taken out. Finish next week

They try to convince the guards still in the control room to join them and help, but father xylex comes over the intercom to tell them that the anointed day actually means creatures coming from beyond the veil.

Below them on the floor of the bay, there are a lot of chaos horrors, and troops from the hive streaming into the room, apparently getting ready for a fight. Lots of different kinds of mutations, here-tech and weird technology, as well as servitors. There are several light armored troop carriers, and one tank of some type.

Tybalt gets on the intercom and convinces the sentinel pilots that father xylex is being impersonated, and that they should fire on the chaos troops below them. Guard troops begin dropping in from above on grav chutes (crappy jump packs, that only go down basically)

They start firing down from the wasp’s nest. Priss (as played by erin) shoots a heavy bolter down and disables a troop carrier. Tord fires a grenade launcher down but misses, he’s not used to being so far away from an enemy.

While firing down, some kind of creature starts climbing up the walls from below down, and the tank down below started firing up above, blowing away part of the wasp’s nest. Pris tries to fire down at the tank, but it blows away a large portion of the floor, almost causing a couple of them to fall to the bottom of the bay. Dariel manages to jinx the main cannon on the tank, and the party starts to head back to the tram that brought them to the nest.

Several hundred guardsmen have dropped down through the gate, and some valkyrie dropships are bringing down large cargo containers. The summoning circle seems to be activating though, as the circle drops down into a large pit, and out of it spring a variety of tentacles, including some on fire, or some with weird manipulators. The tentacles are 60 meters tall, and so extend out of the top door, and one ship is smashed by a tentacle as it attempts to land. The cultists burst into multicolored flame around the circle. As the party looks down at the horrors of the warp, some of them grow more insane.

Dariel gets the sense from watching the scene and viewing the psychic scene, he gets the sense that all of the psychic energy from the death and destruction is getting siphoned off. This seems similar to the original plan they were here to stop, but it seems to be drawn downward, deeper into the hive.